Parallels
by accordianpea
Summary: Danny casually recounts Vlad's change in direction. The guy barely even mentions Maddie anymore. rly just pointless rambling lm..a...o... I? I dont know what genre this counts as ? Danny/Vlad is implied


If you could be honest, you'd call yourself a self-centered little brat; but you aren't honest, you're a ridiculous teenager, and so you call yourself things like 'self-sacrificing'. After all, you do all of the saving-the-day stuff with none of the hero's glory. It's very easy to glorify your actions, so you do. When you're actually kicking butt and throwing banter, you pretend you're as much a picture-perfect hero as Peter Parker (except he was smart and you're, ah, you're having trouble there). You are a terrific hero, and everything always works out for you in the end. You fuck up a lot of other things, like school, friendships, familial interactions, but hey you can afford to be a little gloat-y about having a hang on this half-ghost-evil-fighter thing.

Every ghost has their own reason to hate you, or to target you. You spoiled their plans, you're a rare treasure, you're an easily manipulated pawn, you're a derelict rule-breaker. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of everyone who wants to punch you and why; you try to keep it organized in your head, if only so you can throw out appropriately-themed puns and swing more potent insults when you're winning the fights.

You play Favorites and that is something you're willing to admit. Well, to yourself. It would sound strange to other people. They aren't heroes, so they wouldn't really understand the appeal of having an arch-enemy. You really like that phrase. It sounds cool. You, the ghost-fighting hero, totally have an arch-enemy, a foe, a foil. It was a pain in the ass most days, but looking at the grand scheme of it, it felt glamorous.

Vlad is probably the most messed-up person- ghost- thing you could meet. Well, this assumption is a little baseless, you certainly don't get to see into the private personal lives of Skulker or the Box Ghost (do they even have lives?), but you're pretty sure Vlad is way up there on the crazy scale without having to check. Way way.

When you first met him, he only cared about your mother. You were dealt with effortlessly (still a little humiliating to think about), you didn't matter. You were offered camaraderie for no real reason other than to play a role for him. He hoped you could be a pawn for him and you refused. Oddly, this didn't seem to upset him. You showed him a sliver of your corruptible side, and he seemed more sated by that than anything else that transgressed that day. Looking back on this, you smile and think, that must be where it started.

You lean back and smile. Vlad had spent some twenty years pining for your mother. He'd focused on her for longer than you've been alive. Surely he had composition notebooks filled with schemes, a long timeline of carefully-chosen events to trigger, a whole stock of back-up plans in the event of failure of any of them, and back-ups for those too. He probably had at least a full shelf filled with obsessive, focused plots. You bet he'd planned out full conversations with your mother, trying to prepare for that, too.

And yet (here you kick your feet up and do an accomplished sigh), it really only took you one visit to his mansion to change that course. Pretty impressive.

At first, his plots still centered around 'Maddie'; you just happened to be in them, too. It was worth noting that when your mother pretended to give in to Vlad's whims during the impromptu cabin visit, he didn't cry. He was dry-eyed. He totally did when you baited him, though. Little tears in his eyes. That was definitely one of your top fav victories.

Getting under his skin is so easy for you. He drives you nuts, he makes your lip curl, but then it's so easy to just play with him. That's a weird way to put it (you sneer at yourself for a second), but, eh, it's accurate. Can't deny it; you totally play. It's a cat-and-mouse thing. You're not sure which you are but, shrug.

One day it was too quiet between you two, and you became like a petulant puppy left to its own devices for too long. You waited for him, planning out banter, imagining what insults would get the best reactions out of him, which ones will be potent enough to make him snap at you (that was the best part). You scribbled little beat-up Plasmius doodles alongside your (half-assed) school notes. When you asked Tucker and Sam if they'd like to play a role in a prank on your nemesis, they were eager to join in, and you were relieved that it wasn't questioned; because if pressed to explain why you would provoke the creep of your own accord, you're not really sure what you could say for yourself. Thank goodness your friends don't ever ask, or else you'd have had to analyze your actions. Haha.

It definitely wound up being a Big Mistake to play with him so casually (you kind of forgot about the 'crazy' part for a while there), what with the whole now-he's-the-mayor fiasco and subsequent troubles. But it was interesting how he hadn't made any laws that effected your mother, everything was actually central to you. You were called to the podium, he made sure everybody believed you were his best friend. In those moments, you're always furious, incensed, fuming and wanting to destroy this blight on your life. But then it's all over, and however it ends, the rush leaves you so satisfied that you urgently want for more. You guess it's the sensation of having fought the baddie, that good wholesome 'heroing high' from a day well-saved. Not a bad thing to be addicted to, you assert to yourself. Not bad to indulge in do-gooding, who could argue otherwise?

In the privacy of your room, you wrap arms around your torso and laugh. For twenty years Vlad could think only of your mother, and in only months, you'd all but replaced her in his thoughts.

Plasmius fills notebooks with plots for you, and you fill notebooks with scribbles of him.

(You don't see it yet. Realistically, you probably won't for longer still; when you do, you'll deny it.)


End file.
